Back in the day, I never bought drugs on a street corner. There were dealers in college, and they were mostly classmates or classmate-adjacent. One guy even delivered. I’ve never really thought about how gendered drug dealing really is – I don’t think I’ve ever really considered the idea that women probably aren’t “allowed” to stand on street corners, selling drugs. And of course it’s Amber Rose who makes me realize this. Amber chatted to the Red Pill podcast, and she got real about her “hood” past:
Amber Rose’s past wasn’t all glitz and glamour — she once “tried” to sell drugs.
“I usually don’t tell people this but I tried selling crack in my neighborhood,” Rose confessed on Van Lathan’s “The Red Pill” podcast. “They said I was gonna get robbed, I was a girl and I was too pretty, and it wasn’t going to happen.”
But Rose says she did not stay away from the drug business entirely, instead, she made money by weighing and bagging the drugs to make a cut of the dealers’ profits. Her decision to dabble in the drug scene for money was primarily due to the fact that she was “the queen of the house” and needed to do what “I had to do to feed my family.” But Rose explained that it took her awhile to publicly address her drug experiences because of the double standards in society pertaining to men and the pass they get for doing similar controversial activities in order to survive.
“When it comes to me, do I have to give you this story to understand? It’s been nine years since I been famous, I never told that to nobody,” she said of her past. “It was a hard time in the beginning, and I became a stripper very young. I made that decision, nobody in my family put that on me. I don’t really think people understand how ‘hood I grew up… the s— that I had to overcome, and even overcome after I became famous. My life has never been easy… [But] it did push me to that limit to go fend for my family.”
Amber is so tough. She really is. She made it out of a low-income family by her wits and her ability to do whatever it took, and look at her now – living in a nice house in LA, motherhood and tons of work as a model and feminist activist. I can see how she would be bad at selling drugs on a corner, but her prettiness would have given her a leg up for any smart drug cartel – they could have put her in nightclubs and bars and had her deal from there. Ah, well. Too late now.
Photos courtesy of Backgrid and Getty.
She’s right about the double standard. I admire her honesty.
For me…THIS would be under…
“Things I will take to my grave…and PRAY they don’t ask me about it if there is an afterlife…”
But that’s just me…
But yea…she’s correct…they would have LITERALLY drug her for FILTH and robbed her every second of the day if she was on somebody’s corner slanging….
If rappers can talk about their pasts with drug dealing so can she. And she’s not bragging about it like they do. She’s being real talking about the sacrifices she made to take care of her family.
Agreed. There’s already a double standard when it comes to drug use- it seems like older male celebrities and former rock stars get to tell stories of past drug use and have them seen as experimentation or cute old man stories. Meanwhile drug use for women becomes a moral panic, gets dragged up for years and sometimes decades as proof of what a tainted person the woman is (no matter how much she’s changed or what a positive impact she’s had on the world since then), or gets turned into an excuse for people to spin conspiracy theories about how the woman’s success must have been built by her being passed around since before she could drive or some other ridiculous nonsense. So it wouldn’t be surprising if there were double standards from the dealing angle.
Why does she have to say how pretty someone told her that she is in sooo many interviews? It annoying
I agree TheBees. Have seen better looking women out and about every day. And do we constantly have to keep hearing how “beautiful” she is? Just like how her family did not accept her husband because he is “too dark”? This woman needs to get over herself. Better yet, she needs to go away and I need to find better things to do with my time instead of commenting on how sick of her I really am.
? She’s very pretty. 🙂
I hate when people say they deal drugs to meet financial obligations. That’s a rationalization.
Also, pretty has nothing to do with it. If you want to sell crack, I imagine you have to take a corner from someone else, and they were politely telling her she wasn’t welcome on their corner, taking their business. All being “pretty” did was make the dealer act politely, instead of just taking a bat to her.
Actually it would have a LOT to do with it. Not being pretty but being a woman. Just as a woman walking down the street everyday it’s dangerous. Now imagine being a woman in a business like drug- dealing. I can see how for her safety alone it would be an issue. Her on a corner by herself. It’s dangerous for prositutes!
It’s my understanding that drug dealing, particularly crack, is dangerous for everyone involved. Male or female. There are plenty of female sicarios in Mexico. But yes, I think the dealers treated her differently than they would if a random guy tried to set up business on “their” corner.
Jay, please don’t #allcrackdealers this! lol
This further reinforces my theory that all celebrities are a ruthless bunch that will do anything to make it.
Don’t buy it for one hot second. I won’t divulge where I used to do anything, lol. College was college. Clubs were clubs. Streets were streets. Pretty girls are wanted for anything and everything any time, all the time. This person simply enjoys conversing about how attractive she thinks she is. Celebrities do this all the time. Can’t get roles, can’t date, now they can’t sell drugs. Give yourselves 20 or 30 years so you can truthfully complain about ageism.
THIS^ Beautiful people make money. If they wanted her to sell, they’d have found somewhere (like clubs, as Kaiser suggested). She just wanted to talk up how pretty and special she is. I’m glad she’s out there trying to remove the stigma from sex work and whatnot, but listening to her gush about her own beauty is exhausting.
I agree. Selling drugs isn’t easy, but professing that it was hard for her b/c she’s too pretty is the lamest excuse yet. I know many a model in NYC who sell drugs on a large scale as a side gig.
? I really don’t think she was saying she couldn’t sell drugs because she was pretty. It seems more like someone was basically telling her, ‘you’re too pretty to be doing this’ as if they didn’t expect a pretty girl to be a drug dealer, and also thought it would be dangerous for her because of her gender. They were telling her to go do something else with her time and her youth.
I think she can talk about being pretty as much as she wants because she’s absolutely gorgeous. Still, I don’t think that’s what she wanted to focus on when she shared that info, but that’s all some people heard.
Right? I’ve read plenty of Amber Rose interviews over the past 3 or 4 years and this is the first time I’ve noticed her mentioning being considered pretty in one of them. Maybe it’s because the other stuff she talks about tends to be a lot more important or interesting, to the point where we don’t even notice it.
What? One of these VH1 reality shows had an old lady saying she would make food and the crack dealer would come to her house to trade crack for a plate. So you don’t have to be on the corner. Not sure if I believe her.
Now that the cartel show on VH1 is glorifying Griselda Blanca we’re gonna get more stories about women rappers and personalities selling dope and being bad bitch gangsters 🙄🙄
She’s just a completely trash person and this proves it . She ain’t that pretty either, she’s good looking sure but nothing special.
There are ways to express dislike without dehumanizing those already dehumanized.
@Otaku – AMber is that you???? LOL
True there’s a double standard for men but the fact that she’s pretty/ celebrity and says this shizz publicly is another example of double standards. You think if any regular person did that they’d be employable and be able to have a successful career. Celebrities promoting their drug use as so blase is upsetting because once again they get to play by different rules then the rest of us. Yes marijuana is still illegal in most states and when celebrities wax poetic in magazines about getting high nerves. The average person can expect an arrest and prison time (dependent on if they have money/resources). These stories don’t make me like you or you more relatable!!! It just makes me realize how F privileged you are.
People get so riled up when a woman expresses that she’s attractive. If a woman doesn’t act coy and bashful we label her vapid and self-important, but then we wonder why women tend to lack self-esteem.
She’s fine and she knows it. I wish more women shared that sentiment.